“My maternal grandmother sometimes had visions of the future. That side of the family descended from a place called Scotland on Earth. My mother was a redhead, which is where I get such fair skin from, even though my hair is darker. As I told you, my granny’s visions convinced my family to let me fly. Little did I know when I left Earth that I’d never see any of them again.”
“We hold such gifts of clairvoyance in great esteem,” he said in a very serious tone. His dark gaze pinned her. “They say sometimes it runs in families.”
She squirmed in her seat a bit, knowing what her grandmother had predicted for her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to admit it, but perhaps her gran’s predictions would help her with this compelling man somehow.
“Gran said . . .” She had to clear her throat before she revealed a secret she’d never told another soul.
“Gran knew her gift would pass to my daughter. It would skip two generations, but be extra strong in my child. She said my girl would be an oracle the likes of which hadn’t been seen in our family for hundreds of years.”
“You have a child?” He seemed shocked.
“Not yet.” Lisbet had to smile. “I’ve never known Gran to be wrong, but I wasn’t sure I’d make it there for a while today. Somehow, though, according to my granny’s prediction, I’m going to have a daughter who will be strongly gifted. She saw me having other children too, but she couldn’t tell me more about them, only the girl who will carry her name.”
“I find this fascinating. If we’d had a seer in my family, perhaps I could have avoided—” He stopped abruptly, as if realizing he was speaking aloud. The pain in his eyes made her reach out to him.
“What happened to your family, Captain?”
Four
“It is not fit dinner conversation.” He tried to change the subject, but she was having none of it.
“I just told you something I’ve never told another soul. And I saw the understanding in your eyes when I told you how I’d lost my entire family. Something similar happened to you, didn’t it?”
He regarded her for a long moment. “Are you sure you’re not the gifted one in your family?” She noted the instant he let down his guard. His shoulders lost their tension and his expression changed.
“I am the end of the Fedroval line because no Jit’suku woman will have me. And rightly so. I was not meant to be liege of the House. I was a younger son, meant to serve in the Zenai priesthood. I was away from home when the unthinkable happened – my brothers were murdered by a rival, who has since paid for breaking the warrior’s code. But the damage was done. I had to take over as liege and give up my intended path as a warrior priest. I had not been groomed for the position the way my older brothers were. I made mistakes. One was allowing all the younger females to go on a trip alone, without my protection. I failed to keep them safe, and they died. The wives and children of my dead brothers. The next generation of House Fedroval, gone in an instant.”
“Were they murdered as well?” Lisbet kept her voice to a whisper, shocked at the awfulness of the story.
“It is still unclear. There was an investigation, of course, but the mechanical failure of their ship could have been accidental. There wasn’t enough recovered to reach a conclusion of sabotage, though I strongly believe some of the rival family who escaped punishment for the deaths of my brothers came back to finish the job.”
“Did you go after them?”
“I tried, but without evidence, I cannot make war on another of my kind. Being dishonorable myself will not negate their dishonorable behavior. No, this despicable act – whether accidental or on purpose – has well and truly ended a noble House.”
“But surely you can marry and have children of your own to carry on the line?”
“Because I failed to protect my House adequately, no women of quality or honor would be willing to submit to the nij’ta. If my true mate is out there, she will not allow me to find her.”
“Wait a minute.” Lisbet was confused. “What is a nij’ta?”
He looked surprised by her question as he moved the plates around, making room for a second set of dishes. He paused as he was lifting the dome off some sort of gel.
“The nij’ta is the ritual kiss. It is how we identify our perfect mate. Don’t you have something similar?”
“You can find your life mate through a kiss?” Lisbet couldn’t quite believe what he was saying, yet he seemed perfectly truthful.
“Of course. How do your males go about finding their perfect mate?”
“With a lot of trial and error,” she admitted with a sigh. “We date.” At his puzzled look, she went on.
“We see each other socially, and the relationship progresses to more intimate levels if both parties are agreeable. After a time, the male can ask the female to marry him—”
“Marry?”
“It means to legalize the relationship – joining them in the eyes of the law, and of any religion either or both might follow.”
“We call that ‘mating’.”
She nodded.
“And then they stay together forever.” He stated it as fact rather than as a question, surprising her again.
“Not always. That would be the ideal, but a lot of times people grow apart, which is why they invented divorce.”
“Divorce?” He looked even more puzzled, and pronounced the word carefully, as if it were totally unfamiliar to him.
“When two married people are legally divided – and no longer married,” she explained.
“No longer mated?” He sounded scandalized. “There is no divorce among my kind. We mate for life.”
“Really? No divorce? Never?” It didn’t seem possible to her.
“The nij’ta does not lie. A man must kiss a lot of women before he finds the one that makes his blood sing. I will never have that opportunity now and it is one of my deepest regrets. I would have liked to have a wife and children.”
“I really don’t understand why you can’t just ask a woman to marry you. Maybe she won’t be of noble birth, but judging by this ship, you’re loaded. There are a lot of women who would marry you for your money, I’m sure. And you’re not bad looking.” She added the last bit out of sheer devilry. The man was handsome as sin. If he weren’t her enemy, she’d seriously think about jumping his bones just to see if his lovemaking lived up to the advertisement.
“That is not how things are done among my people. By my prior negligence, I have proven to be careless with those I am responsible for. No woman of reasonable station would have me. I could father children on a mistress who might come to me out of pity, or for the things I could buy for her, but those children could not carry on my line legally. And mating cannot happen without the positive results of the nij’ta. I am in an unwinnable situation, which is why I commissioned this ship and set out on the warrior’s path.”
“So who’s running things at home while you’re here? I assume your family still has interests that pay for all of this.” She gestured to the luxurious suite. She knew she was being nosey in the extreme, but she was learning a lot about the aliens in general, and this devastatingly handsome man in particular.
“The dowager. My mother. She heads the family. I am merely the liege now that my brothers are gone. I thought I’d be a priest. I’d given up the idea of a wife and children of my own, but now I want them more than anything in the world, and they are denied me. All I have left is my mission, and your presence has brought that into question, too. The Lady of Chaos has touched my world repeatedly, and altered my path in ways I could never anticipate.”